Carbonated soft drinks (csd) producers can now take advantage of the better bottle performance and lighter weight of the award-winning sidel starlite™ pet bottle base.

Sidel StarLite is a uniquely shaped base that
increases the overall resistance and stability of PET bottles. It
can also reduce the amount of PET material needed to produce the
finished bottle, allowing for reduced wall thickness for an optimum
strength-to-weight ratio. The result is a bottle that uses
less raw materials and therefore weighs less, requiring less energy
to produce, yet delivering better pallet stability and improved
bottle integrity throughout the entire supply chain. Sidel StarLite
does all of this without compromising on the safety, hygiene or the
integrity of the beverage contained within the bottle.

Several Sidel customers have trialled the StarLite CSD
bottle base and have already achieved impressive results, including
significant improvements in resistance to stress cracking.
Under the rigorous test protocol of the International Society of
Beverage Technologists (ISBT), the new base lasted 30% longer for
0.5 litre bottles, 50% longer for 1.5 litre bottles and 60% longer
for 2.0 litre bottles. The base successfully completed the
ISBT 24-hour creeping test under 45°C conditions, compared with
38°C required under standard testing. This means the base has
better resistance and is less likely to burst during production or
deform during transport. This also results in more stable
pallets.

Base weights can be reduced by up to 20% for 0.5 litre bottles
(from 5g average to 4g), 19% for 1.5 litre (from 9g to 7.3g) and
17% for 2 litres (from 12g to 10g). These lightweighting
opportunities can lead to cost savings of up to EUR 331,000 per
year for 0.5-litre lines, EUR 563,000 per year for 1.5-litre lines
and EUR 662,000 per year for 2-litre lines (Sidel data*).
Under controlled conditions, the new CSD base can be blown using as
little as only 16 bars of air pressure compared to the 25 bars
average for 0.5 litre bottles, saving on energy use as well.
The 1.5 litre bottles can be blown with as little as 18 bars
compared to the 26 bars average, and 2 litre bottles with only 20
bars compared to the previous 28-30 bars average. Again, this
can lead to annual savings of up to EUR 78,700 (Sidel
data**). Due to its compatibility with the Sidel Matrix™
system, output rates can be as high as 2,300 bottles per mould per
hour for 0.5 litre bottles, 2,250 bottles per mould per hour for
1.5 litre bottles and 2,000 bottles per mould per hour for 2 litre
bottles, depending on conditions and specifications.

Laurent Naveau, Packaging Care Manager at Sidel,
comments: "The carbonated soft drinks segment remains the second
most popular after water with about 220 billion litres consumed in
2013, representing 28% of the global non-alcoholic beverage market.
Around 40% of this amount is packaged in PET. These huge
figures help explain why we are constantly striving to help
beverage producers worldwide unlock value from their CSD
bottles."

He continues: "One way of doing this is to reduce bottle weight
and therefore the costs of PET and the environmental footprint,
while maintaining or improving bottle performance. With
StarLite CSD, Sidel can help beverage producers achieve exactly
this for their carbonated soft drinks production."

The award-winning StarLite base design was originally developed
for non-carbonated drinks where the bottles are under less
pressure. The still drinks version was launched in 2013, and
that design won the 'Best Environmental Sustainability Initiative'
category at the 2013 Global Bottled Water Awards. Looking to the
potential in CSD, Sidel's packaging experts took the principles
adopted in the still drinks base, analysing different base designs
to achieve the optimum performance and strength for CSD products.
They then carried out numerous computer simulations followed by
real-world physical tests. Now, after developing a CSD version,
Sidel has launched it to a receptive marketplace.

The new design includes four key patents covering
the slopes, ridges and truncations of the bottle base. The
StarLite design is easier to blow than previous CSD bases because
it can be done within a wider range of parameter settings on the
blower, while still achieving the desired performance. As
would be expected, it can be used on all Sidel blowing
platforms for liquid packaging - including the Sidel Matrix system
- at all existing output speeds. The new base is also easier
to blow than previous CSD bases because it can be done within a
wider range of parameter settings on the blower, whilst still
achieving desired blowing performance.

The base can easily be incorporated into existing bottle designs
by Sidel's packaging engineering team. It can also be
retrofitted onto existing production lines and moulds, using
Sidel's accompanying enhanced StarLite CSD mould bases and line
conversion services. The accompanying Sidel StarLite CSD
mould features an enhanced venting design for optimized cooling
capabilities, and was developed in tandem to reach the desired high
StarLite CSD bottle base performance levels.

For more information about what the innovative Sidel StarLite
base can do for CSD and still drinks bottles please click here.

*Based on an SBO 20 Universal2 running at 6,000 hours of
production per year, with an output of 2,000 bottles per hour with
a PET cost of EUR 1,600 per ton.

**Based on an SBO 20 Universal2 Eco producing 2 litre
bottles with 6,000 hours of production per year with a reduction in
air pressure of 10 bars, without the use of an air recovery system
at a cost of 0.08€/kwh.